Fortunately, the Greeks have learned from their quondam Turkish masters the art of making coffee, and a cup of this Eastern cordial kept our dry bread from choking us.

When we came out again the aspect of matters was more cheerful; the long street was swarming with Greeks, many of them armed with pistols and yataghan, but miserably poor in appearance, and in such numbers that not half of them could find the shelter of a roof at night. We were accosted by one dressed in a hat and frockcoat, and who, in occasional visits to Corfu and Trieste, had picked up some Italian and French, and a suit of European clothes, and was rather looked up to by his untravelled countrymen. As a man of the world, who had received civilities abroad, he seemed to consider it incumbent upon him to reciprocate at home, and, with the tacit consent of all around, he undertook to do the honours of Missilonghi.

If, as a Greek, he had any national pride about him, he was imposing upon himself a severe task; for all that he could do was to conduct us among ruins, and, as he went along, tell us the story of the bloody siege which had reduced the place to its present woful state. For more than a year, under unparalleled hardships, its brave garrison resisted the combined strength of the Turkish and Egyptian armies, and, when all hope was gone, resolved to cut their way through the enemy or die in the attempt. Many of the aged and sick, the wounded and the women, refused to join in the sortie, and preferred to shut themselves up in an old mill, with the desperate purpose of resisting until they should bring around them a large crowd of Turks, when they would blow all up together. An old invalid soldier seated himself in a mine under the Bastion Bozzaris (the ruins of which we saw), the mine being charged with thirty kegs of gunpowder; the last sacrament was administered by the bishop and priests to the whole population and, at a signal, the besieged made their desperate sortie. One body dashed through the Turkish ranks, and, with many women and children, gained the mountains; but the rest were driven back. Many of the women ran to the sea and plunged in with their children; husbands stabbed their wives with their own hands to save them from the Turks, and the old soldier under the bastion set fire to the train, and the remnant of the heroic garrison buried themselves under the ruins of Missilonghi.

Among them were thirteen foreigners, of whom only one escaped. One of the most distinguished was Meyer, a young Swiss, who entered as a volunteer at the beginning of the revolution, became attached to a beautiful Missilonghiote girl, married her, and, when the final sortie was made, his wife being sick, he remained with her, and was blown up with the others. A letter written a few days before his death, and brought away by one who escaped in the sortie, records the condition of the garrison.

"A wound which I have received in my shoulder, while I am in daily expectation of one which will be my passport to eternity, has prevented me till now from bidding you a last adieu. We are reduced to feed upon the most disgusting animals. We are suffering horribly with hunger and thirst. Sickness adds much to the calamities which overwhelm us. Seventeen hundred and forty of our brothers are dead; more than a hundred thousand bombs and balls thrown by the enemy have destroyed our bastions and our homes. We have been terribly distressed by the cold, for we have suffered great want of food. Notwithstanding so many privations, it is a great and noble spectacle to behold the ardour and devotedness of the garrison. A few days more, and these brave men will be angelic spirits, who will accuse before God the indifference of Christendom. In the name of all our brave men, among whom are Notho Bozzaris, *** I announce to you the resolution sworn to before Heaven, to defend, foot by foot, the land of Missilonghi, and to bury ourselves, without listening to any capitulation, under the ruins of this city. We are drawing near our final hour. History will render us justice. I am proud to think that the blood of a Swiss, of a child of William Tell, is about to mingle with that of the heroes of Greece."

But Missilonghi is a subject of still greater interest than this, for the reader will remember it as the place where Byron died. Almost the first questions I asked were about the poet, and it added to the dreary interest which the place inspired, to listen to the manner in which the Greeks spoke of him. It might be thought that here, on the spot where he breathed his last, malignity would have held her accursed tongue; but it was not so. He had committed the fault, unpardonable in the eyes of political opponents, of attaching himself to one of the great parties that then divided Greece; and though he had given her all that man could give, in his own dying words, "his time, his means, his health, and, lastly, his life," the Greeks spoke of him with all the rancour and bitterness of party spirit. Even death had not won oblivion for his political offences; and I heard those who saw him die in her cause affirm that Byron was no friend to Greece.

His body, the reader will remember, was transported to England and interred in the family sepulchre. The church where it lay in state is a heap of ruins, and there is no stone or monument recording his death, but, wishing to see some memorial connected with his residence here, we followed our guide to the house in which he died. It was a large square building of stone, one of the walls still standing, black with smoke, the rest a confused and shapeless mass of ruins. After his death it was converted into a hospital and magazine; and, when the Turks entered the city, they set fire to the powder; the sick and dying were blown into the air, and we saw the ruins lying as they fell after the explosion. It was a melancholy spectacle, but it seemed to have a sort of moral fitness with the life and fortunes of the poet. It was as if the same wild destiny, the same wreck of hopes and fortunes that attended him through life, were hovering over his grave. Living and dead, his actions and his character have been the subject of obloquy and reproach, perhaps justly; but it would have softened the heart of his bitterest enemy to see the place in which he died.

It was in this house that, on his last birthday, he came from his bedroom and produced to his friends the last notes of his dying muse, breathing a spirit of sad foreboding and melancholy recollections; of devotion to the noble cause in which he had embarked, and a prophetic consciousness of his approaching end.

Moving on beyond the range of ruined houses, though still within the line of crumbling walls, we came to a spot perhaps as interesting as any that Greece in her best days could show. It was the tomb of Marco Bozzaris! No monumental marble emblazoned his deeds and